A 3D Printing, Digital Fabrication, Gaming Enthusiast Blog

Month: May 2016

I recently started working at Tech Shop, a maker space in Arlington filled with 3d printers, woodshop, CNC routers, waterjets, and laser cutters. It’s a great place to work on your own projects or take classes to learn how to use the machinery. I work as a front desk assistant and therefore am able to take free classes- a pretty sweet gig if you ask me. About a month ago, I took the safety and basic use class for the rotary attachment for the laser cutters. In school, I used laser cutters to cut components of my models , yet I never knew a rotary attachment existed. Essentially, the attachment allows you to laser cut/etch on a curved surface. A very useful piece of equipment! Here is an image of my first project on it (Lord of the Rings nerdom):

After completing my first glass, I realized I could create some great gifts on the rotary. My friend Tori’s graduation is coming up and I thought it would be cool to make something for the occasion. Tori is a fantastic artist and appreciates handmade gifts; I decided it would be even cooler if I made something that incorporated her own art. I creeped through her facebook album of artwork until I found something I could easily etch on glass:

Beautiful design and only two-toned- perfect. First step, I needed to image trace and rasterize this bad boy in Illustrator. Super simple, took about a minute:

Afterwards, I had to resize the image to ensure it would fit on the glass I purchased. I measured the height of the glass and used that as the width of the image, then measured the circumference of the glass (used a caliper to measure the diameter then did the math) to use as the height of the image. I kept the opacity of the etch at 100% because I really wanted her design to stand out against the clear glass. I fit the glass on the rotary and let the laser do its thing. Took about 15 minutes to etch entirely, which I didn’t think was too bad. Overall, my handmade gift only took about 20 minutes. Safe to say, I will definitely be making more gifts on the rotary!